joyota my Toyota in jeeps clothing

This build starts a long long time ago with many dead ends , failures and even being sold once .

where it sits now
*73cj5 body
*87 standard cab Toyota frame and drivetrain with a sas
*front axle is trussed armored and gusseded. v6 diff with a arb locker and 5.29s . Bobby longs and high steer
*Rear axle is trussed v6 5.29 and a Detroit locker
*duel cases
*hybrid ruf pack in the front rears are 4" lifted springs for a explorer
*sitting on 38s future plan is 37 or 40s

Now this thing started life as a bone stock 73 cj5 purchased new by my father . I spent my childhood in this thing out in the woods , taking trips with my dad's jeep club it's what really sparked the fire and desire to be off the beaten path . Life often gets in the way and my parents got divorced when I was 6 or 7 and not long after that the jeep needed a transmission and ended up just sitting for a very long time . We will fast forward to my dumber 19 year self who wanted to make a wheeler out of it . At to his point I was very into Toyota and had a extra set of axles sitting around so I figured " he'll it's gotta be stronger then the jeep axles so I swapped them in and gave it a ton of lift with the spring over .... and there it sat again for many years

Fast forward again after a couple of re designs and motor swaps I was never happy with the Driveline angles/ motor placement and many other aspects of it I decided to just sell it to a friend of a friend who thankfully never paid me for it so I took it back .and I decided it was time to actually take it off the back burner and get to doing it right

finally took it off the back burner and started to make some headway on it got it all together and running , drove it around a little and just hated it , it was way to tall and it's a cj5 so way to small for 4 people
After doing a lot of " research" aka drinking beer and staring at it, I decided the best way to combat the Driveline angles was to do a spring under and stretch it to a cj6

I kinda liked the looks of it so I cut the tub and tacked some crap together . But with my constant craigslist shopping I came across 3 deals that really changed the build 4 the better .

First I found a hardtop for the cj5 with all the glass , Windows rolled up and down and it was in all around great shape 200$ , couldn't pass that up so what to do about the extra tub length ? I thought about stretching the top to fit but bodywork is not my strong suit and the top is rather thin material .back to that in a minute

Score # 2 a set of Toyota axles just built with 5.29s arb in the front Detroit in the rear Bobby longs and trussed.
My original idea for the jeep was a Toyota in jeeps clothing the main reason I didn't go all the way through with it was I already had 4.10 v6 different in both ends so it worked gearing wise very well with a v8 but now I had these 5.29 stuffed axles

Score #3 my buddy had a 87 Toyota pickup that had a rebuilt motor with around 40k on it , he owed me a little money for some stuff so a good deal was struck and that's where this build really begins.

So first thing on the list was to get the Toyota torn down.
My goal was to keep everything as close to stock as possible so repairs will be easy and parts can be sourced most anywhere, that means a lot of labeling and not cutting any wiring.

After everything was torn down the body bed and all the other parts I didn't use went to a new home to fix a truck that got rolled
Now I had my pile of goodies and a clean frame to work with

... well semi clean the truck spent alot of its life on a farm so it took another pressure washing to get clean

At thispoint having a lift or a couple of friends would have been real handy but I was impatient and wanted to get stuff done so I used the only thing I had available, a cherry picker to pull the tub off the jeep frame .
Thankfully I didn't drop the tub or kill myself with it and everything went mostly smooth
Now obviously the ifs would not work so out with the plasma and off with the ifs

Everybody has seen plenty of sas swaps so no need for alot of detail but I did have to change a few things on mine .
I needed to push the spring and shackle mounts a little further past the frame to get the tire where I wanted . Really have to give ashout out to sky offroad design, their stuff is amazingly well built and uses all USA metal and labor .

Next was moving onto some wiring . I hate wiring , that was alot of the reason I wanted to keep the harness as complete as possible . Thankfully everything went together really smooth and the only thing I had to mess with was adding some wire to the passenger side of the harness that runs to the tank and to the airbox due to moving it to the passenger side . Also mounted the battery behind the motor because there's tons of room in there . I did manage to mess up the only two plugs on the whole harness that could actually plug into each other so I ended up burning up some of the alternator harness but after figuring out my mistake it fired right up .

Next order of business was getting some steering hooked up so moving it around the shop would be easier .
Fairly standard for a SAS, sleeve the frame , make some plates bolt it together . I had to notch the frame a little to clear the flat pitman arm

In my effort to use as much Toyota as possible I used the stock petal assembly , steering column, brake master and clutch master . Took a bit of messing around but eventually it all fit , had to cut and bend the clutch petal to make it work and give the floorboard a bit of lovin with a big hammer so it would get its full range

At this point I'm actually about 70% done with it actually drove it for the first time around my buddy shop for the first time in a real long time the other day. The bed is pretty small it'll hold a cooler and maybe a tupperware container but that's all I really need for it

Like I said earlier my original plan was to use the Toyota dash , heater all that stuff but it just wouldn't fit without looking just odd so I'm experimenting with using just the Toyota gage cluster .
Need to trim down all the plastic and make some sort of covering for it but for now I just want to get all of it together and working so I can pull it all apart , do all my final cleaning , welds and paint

I was getting tired of looking at the rear frame just sticking behind the body so a trip to the dollar tree and some tape and I had a real ruff markup of what the bed would look like
Got the bed mostly together and skinned next I need to work on the floor , tailgate and tops of the tool boxes

Now we are starting to get to the fun stuff and tuning the suspension. I needed to pull it out of the shop to do a little pressure washing to knock off some more dirt before I finished cutting off the rest of the ifs mounts and cleaning up the frame . While I had it outside I figured I may as well use my buddies new free forklift and see how everything works out .
I need to pull a leaf from the rear pack to soften it up a little and add some leafs to the front pack to stiffen it up but all in all everything cycles well and is stable with 1 tire off the ground

Very creative. Not sure what to think quite yet, but I think I like where you went with it. One thing though, keep the Jeep dash and replace the Toyota gauge cluster with an aftermarket set. It's the one thing, IMO, that detracts from the whole concept. Probably the steering column also, but that's not as bad.

Very creative. Not sure what to think quite yet, but I think I like where you went with it. One thing though, keep the Jeep dash and replace the Toyota gauge cluster with an aftermarket set. It's the one thing, IMO, that detracts from the whole concept. Probably the steering column also, but that's not as bad.

BTW, welcome to 'Mud

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The reason I kept the Toyota gage cluster and columm is I want to keep everything as close to factory as possible so in essence it's a 87 Toyota pickup and sourcing parts and troubleshooting would be no different then working on a stock rig . if it doesn't work out the way I'm thinking it will then yes I'll switch to other gages but it doesn't need to be pretty just functional